FIG. 1 shows an exemplary embodiment of a web page 10 that includes a header section 12, a navigation bar 14, a topics section 16, a contents section 18, an advertisements section 20, notices 22, and navigation links 24. The header section 12 includes a logo 26 and a login section 28 that allows users to sign into their account with a web server that is serving the web page 10. The navigation bar 14 typically contains links (e.g., hypertext links) to other pages of a web site that includes the web page 10. The topics section 16 includes a set of topic slots designated for receiving respective topic-based objects. The contents section 18 includes a set of content slots for receiving respective content-based objects. The advertisements section 20 includes a set of ad slots for receiving respective advertisement-based objects. The notices 22 include various legal (e.g., copyright) and other notices that the web site owner wishes to convey to users of the web site. The navigation links 24 include links to specific pages that are associated with the web site, including links to a search page, a link to a page that describes the terms and conditions relating to the use of the web site, a link to a page that provides a map of the web site, and a link to a help page.
The slots in any of the topics section 16, the contents section 18, and the advertisements section 20 may be filled with different user-selectable objects over time. For example, the slots of the topics section 16 may be populated with various topical user-selectable contents that relate to different topics (e.g., entertainment, politics, finance, nature); the slots of the contents section 20 may be filled with various content-based objects (e.g., stories, articles, and other information available on the World Wide Web); and the slots of the advertisements section 20 may be filled with various advertisements. Although a variety of different methods made by used to populate the variable content sections of the web page 10 with different user-selectable contents over time, both the owner and the users of the web site typically benefit by prioritizing these user-selectable contents in a way that increases the number of times the contents are selected (or clicked on) by the users: the owner typically benefits by increasing the revenues and the popularity of the web site; and the users benefit by being able to quickly access information that is most likely to be relevant to the users' interests.
For this reason, content providers vie for users' limited attention by resorting to a number of strategies aimed at maximizing the number of clicks devoted to their web sites. These strategies range from data personalization and short videos to the dynamic rearrangement of items in a given page, to name a few. In all these cases, the ultimate goal is the same: to draw the attention of the visitor to a website before she proceeds to the next one. A variety of different factors, such as the location and size of the user-selectable content on a web page, affect the amount of attention that a particular user-selectable content will receive. For example, user-selectable contents appearing at the top of a web page typically will generate more page clicks than user-selectable contents appearing at the bottom of the web page. The goal for many content providers is to optimize these factors so as to maximize the number of clicks on the web page. Most solutions to the problem of website relevance are based on either page rank (like the Google algorithm) or heuristics used by the editors of the page. Neither of these strategies, however, can guarantee a maximum number of clicks per interval of time.
What are needed are improved systems and methods of populating variable content slots on a web page.